[PLUG] OK, now I did it. Deleted /bin

[John Purser]

On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:38:34 -0700
John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> wrote:

> The computer is still running.
> 
> I have two installations of Dapper-64. One is plain, bare
> installation on hda2, which is 60 GB (hda1 is swap). The second
> installation is the real one, on hda3 (8 GB). I have been tweaking,
> testing and installing on the second one (the hda3 installation). My
> plan was always to wipe out the first installation, then copy all
> files from the second installation to it so that my real installation
> would be on the 60 GB partition, leaving the second installation on
> the 8 GB partition as a rescue installation. Today I decided it was
> time to do so.
> 
> Both installations automatically mount the other's partition. So here
> I am running the second (real) installation, I opened Nautilus to
> display hda2, and I see all its files and folders. So far, so good. I
> wanted to delete them all. Then I thought I would use rsync to copy
> everything from this real installation to hda2, replacing all the
> deleted files.
> 
> However, I ran into a problem. I couldn't delete anything.
> Permissions and ownerships, of course. OK, to heck with Nautilus. I
> opened terminal window and navigated to /media/hda2. Then I tried
> sudo rmdir bin (thinking I would just start with the top one and work
> my way down). But this gave me an error message that the folder was
> not empty. After reading the --help I finally accomplished it with
> sudo rmdir -r /bin. While doring this I had the Nautilus window open
> showing hda2. And the bin folder disappeared. 
> 
> So then repeated, substituting "boot" for "bin." And this gave me
> "command not found." What? This worked a few seconds ago. 
> 
> Yep. That command deleted the bin folder from BOTH partitions. This,
> in spite of the fact that I was in jjj at Devil5:/media/hda2$ when I
> issued the command. 
> 
> OK, time to look at backups. Oops. All my backups so far have been
> just /home and /etc. I have no full disk image backup.
> 
> Wait ... once at a Clinic a couple months ago I replaced the original
> hard drive with a new one. Then I put the old one in a USB enclosure.
> It should still have the /bin folder. <Scrambling around, finding
> drive and its cable.> OK, it's plugged in. Nautilus sees it as "54.9
> GB Volume." But double-clicking on it gives me an error message
> "Unable to mount the volume, unable to execute pmount." OK, it's
> probably not listed in fstab. My other USB drive is still connected
> and mounted at /media/usbdisk. I'll unmount both, then plug in just
> the old one. Hopefully Dapper will see it as a USB drive that it can
> mount at /dev/usbdisk. 
> 
> Oops. "Unable to unmount." OK, never mind. I can unmount the things.
> Because, push come to shove, my fingers are more powerful than the
> computer. I waited a few moments and made sure no lights were
> flickering, then pulled them out. They disappeared from Nautilus.
> Then I plugged in just the old one. Didn't work. Shows up in
> Nautilus, but same error message about not being able to execute
> pmount. OK -- wild guess here -- pmount is a utility located in /bin.
> <Sigh>
> 
> OK, no problem, back to the command line. Opened the terminal window
> where I caused this mess. Decided to do "dmesg | tail" to see what
> the drive is called. When I hit enter, a message popped up "Gnome
> terminal has quit unexpectedly." I clicked on restart. Got the same
> error message. Several more times, same error message. Terminal will
> not run. OK -- wild guess here -- it needs something in /bin.
> 
> "Fine," I thought. "I'll just Ctrl-Alt-F1 to a command line." And
> that worked. Got to a command line. It was asking for my login. So I
> typed jjj and hit enter, expecting it to ask for my password. But
> nothing happened. The prompt for the password did not appear. Several
> more tries, same results. OK -- wild guess here -- login needs
> something in /bin.
> 
> OK, computer is still running, but I'm out of ideas. I still have 10
> GB unused on the hard disk. I can shut down, make a fresh install of
> Dapper on it, then copy its /bin folder to the others. It appears
> that's the only way I can get /bin back. We'll see if Sylpheed can
> still send an e-mail. If so, I'll wait for an hour or so to see if
> there is a guru on the list with a better, simpler suggestion. 
> 
> This is just Monday morning. :(
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John,

I'm not clear on how you deleted BOTH bin directories with that one
command.  Are you sure there isn't a bin directory on hda2?  From the
commands in your letter I would have expected the /bin on hda3 to have
been wiped out but not the one on hda2.  Perhaps you just need to
specify the full path or alter your search path to get you through this.

John Purser

 -- 
Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.